


daydreams

by Radio Rascal (Vagrants)



Category: Gears of War (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Misgendering, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 23:51:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14296161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrants/pseuds/Radio%20Rascal
Summary: You have to play the game to win, even when it's rigged.





	daydreams

**Author's Note:**

> this is really just me creatively angsting over not having access to testosterone/having to be closeted
> 
> but i do feel like the COG wouldn't be nice to trans people, all things considered
> 
> (i didn't really edit this i just gave it a once-over for spelling/grammar)
> 
> also i seriously suggest NOT reading this if you're having bad gender feels yourself, i felt kind of fucky while writing this though it was overall therapeutic for me

Sunlight hammered on the fields. There was little relief to be had in the shade of the crops. David sat up to wipe sweat from his eyes. A kink in his spine tightened, causing him to flinch.

He could feel nothing but wearied resignation at this point. Frustration took too much energy and there were many things taking his energy nowadays. So much of his mind was focused on his task, he barely had time to worry about the constant threat of Locust right outside the city, down the road, beneath him.

Sometimes, when he was bored, when he needed something more than numbing tedium to occupy himself, he imagined an emergence hole opening right below his feet. He would fall in, fall onto a drawn blade. His vision would fade and his last thought would be,  _ Fuck you. You’ll never get what you wanted from me. _

* * *

David lived in a complex with his peers and coworkers. He walked into the building, enveloped in the smell of too many unwashed humans. It was oddly comforting; his fantasies hadn’t taken shape yet. He didn’t want grubs to kill anyone. It was a silly thing, a private stage play for himself, and he didn’t want any higher powers that might exist to get ideas from him.

He slotted into the cafeteria line, ate quietly while sandwiched between two people he recognized but didn’t know, and took a shower with his eyes closed.

The cruel sun had given up the sky to the moons by the time he got dried and dressed. When he was a kid, he could stare at that night sky for hours. Now, by the time the dark settled and the moons rose, he was too tired to do anything but sleep.

Sleep was anything but easy, though. With nothing to occupy his idle mind, he focused too hard on his body. Every ache, twinge, and wound vied for his attention, but the worst was the buzzing under the pain. There were pills to ease the effects of hard labor, but the cure for  _ this _ ailment was far from his reach still.

“Hey, &$#(? Are you awake?”

David turned on his side to look at Hailey. She lay on the bed across the aisle from him. He accepted the nasty-sounding word she used for him with minimal discomfort. Things weren’t too bad tonight. “Yeah?”

“Are you going to the class tomorrow?” And he just said things weren’t bad...

“No,” was his automatic response. He had enough agony from his condition without surrounding himself with constant reminders of what was happening to him.

Hailey pouted. “You need to go to at least  _ one _ .”

“I’ll be fine.” David returned to laying on his back. Moving made his muscles protest. “Don’t ask me again.”

“Okay. God. Fine.”

Anger. All he felt was anger. It took him an hour to fall asleep.

* * *

His rage rivaled the brilliance of the moons, some days. He glared at the requisitions office on his way to work, hoping his malice could effect the officers inside like the radiation from a nuclear bomb. Dark daydreams took form in his mind once more, taking creative and unusual shapes.

Emergence holes and grubs.

Bloodied faces and his fists.

A wire hanger and a bathroom.

_ That’d show them, _ David thought, swinging his sickle in an arc so wide he accidentally took off the top foot of a crop.  _ Fuck it. _ He pressed a boot into the severed stem and leaves, imagining his anger draining through his limb and into the soil. Maybe it would poison the whole goddamn place.

His attention suddenly drew inward, focusing on a fleeting thing he’d felt in his belly. When he realized what he’d felt, all his emotions froze and he stood still as a statue. He forgot work, and anger, and even the grubs. The only war going on was inside his head.

_ Oh. Oh god. _

_ Oh no. _

Leaves rustled, and Hailey was there. “What’re you doing, &$#(? Are you okay?”

“It just kicked,” David whispered.

Hailey smiled, all ignorant sunshine. “Wow, &$#(! That’s amazing! Let me feel!” And her hand was on his stomach.

He didn’t leave his body, exactly, but was standing one foot outside it, only paying attention because he had to. Physically, the sensation was half pain, half fever-like sensitivity. Another kick, another blow to his thinning bodily connection.

Hailey gasped, then laughed. “That must feel so weird.”

_ You have no idea. _ David burst into tears.

“&$#(, what’s wrong? Is it just hormones? It’s okay...it happened to my mom too…”

* * *

The following months were hell. Nothing compared to the penultimate moment in terms of raw agony. But he bore the suffering like another child, and one day--one day--it was over.

He didn’t love his son yet. He worried he never would. What would he say to his child?  _ You were a means to an end. Sorry. _

Three days after giving birth, David felt well enough to move around. He left Gregory with Hailey and took a slow walk to the requisitions office. Despite his lingering fatigue, he grew more excited with each step.

“Hey,” he said to the man at the desk. “I’m here to pick up some hormone injections. Testosterone. I ordered them a while ago but was told I had to…” He trailed off, gesturing with a hand.

“Name?”

He said it.

The man checked something on a laptop. “It says here you had one son. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I--”

“But that’s not enough.”

David froze. “Wh--but--you told me I had to have a kid before I could get T.” His anger swelled, making him feel bigger and meaner than he really was. “A kid!  _ One _ child, which I produced!”

The man shrugged, looking at the display with the same detached amusement that a cat watches a dying insect. “The rules changed. You got to have two kids now before you do anything that can cause infertility, like taking hormones.”

David did not move or speak for a while. There was nothing he could do about his situation, so he wanted to literally do nothing. He would stand here and starve and rot and not move at all.

“Please go,” the man said. “There’s a queue behind you.”

That startled him back to life. He slipped out of the door, past a young woman.  _ Or maybe not, _ he thought.  _ Maybe they’re like me and they’re about to get screwed. _

He found a wall and leaned into it, pressing his forehead against the cool plaster. Despair opened a pit inside him. He couldn’t go through  _ that _ again, not right away, but he didn’t know how he could go on like this either. The rest of his life seemed to stretch before him like a long, sun-beaten highway. In the desert.

And in the middle of the street, an emergence hole opened, and he fell onto a welcome blade.


End file.
